At work, the subject of Ukraine came up. Someone I had worked with for years and seemed reasonably intelligent went on an absurd rant about how Ukraine was overrun with Nazis who were planning on using bioweapons against the U.S. He added that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was really a terrorist who overthrew the government to seize power. (Zelenskyy was democratically elected in a landslide in 2019.) He also said Russians were liberating the Ukrainians and he was there for it. For good measure, he threw in something about Hillary Clinton being involved in all of this.
I have written before about the ridiculous nonsense I hear from otherwise rational people. It’s a bit disarming during the course of a casual conversation that the other person suddenly brings up FEMA camps, tells me that vaccines are made out of babies, or that all school shootings are staged. A few years ago, a nice man I sat next to on an airplane told me Obama was going to unilaterally disband the Marine Corps. Just last year, I was told COVID-19 vaccines would make you magnetic. Recently, a manager I work with informed me that Putin’s Ukraine invasion is really all about disrupting Bill Gates’ “New World Order.” None of this is okay.
I can’t help myself, so I always engage. Yet I am as confused as I am appalled that they repeat garbage without the slightest bit of critical analysis. I have a lot of left-leaning friends as well, and though they believe Gov. Ron DeSantis is evil, none of us believe he eats babies for breakfast. We don’t have to make things up—he is awful enough on his own. The conservative conspiracy theorists I keep running into aren’t lying because they really believe the nonsense they are espousing. After coming across a recent scientific study that gave insight into this phenomenon, I dug a little deeper. It turns out, there are real reasons that right-wing adherents go so easily off the deep end. Knowing the “why” can help you to counter the “how.”
Liberals don’t typically fall for nonsense, but don’t take my word for it. Professional fake-news creators admit that conservatives are targeted over liberals.
“We’ve tried to do [fake news with] liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.”
Watching the stunning ignorance displayed at Trump’s recent Michigan rally is shocking, and although it’s tempting to say it’s pure ignorance, the science explains that it is more about how we are wired. There are multiple studies that show how liberals and conservatives differ, not just in political views, but in different purviews of life. Conservatives register a greater response to negative stimuli because they tend to view the world as a dangerous place and are “hyper-attuned” to the hazards in the world.
This is why fearmongering is used more often as a persuasion technique in right-wing media, and why conspiracies are more likely to take root in conservative thought. Liberals, on the other hand, tend to be more hopeful about mankind and are much more likely to respond to persuasion over the perceived benefits of something presented. This explains why there is such a huge disconnect in legislative policy initiatives from both parties.
Democrats push legislation to expand rights, create programs, or build infrastructure. Conservatives, however, tend to promote bills to address perceived dangers-–even if the dangers are fake. This past year we saw bills dealing with “critical race theory,” undocumented immigrants, and more recently, bills to “protect” children from “grooming.” Here in Florida, our governor just signed a ridiculous bill to protect kindergartners from what they believe is a secret society of teachers trying to convert them into homosexuality.
Miami protest against Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law
This perception of made-up enemies is nothing new, but a trait of cult-like behavior. Another trait is idolizing a leader, which Republicans have been prone to do for decades. The worship of Ronald Reagan was just the beginning.
Yet cultish behavior has been enabled and encouraged for years by establishment Republicans, who viewed their devotion as necessary to fuel unpopular policies that benefit the business class. The problem is that the new Trump-era conservatives have brought the fringe into the mainstream of their party.
In 2015, an author on cults spoke to a senior Republican congressman who lamented the fact that he used to spend 90% of his discussions with constituents about “actual legislation” while the remaining 10% spoke of chemtrails and other nonsense, and he noticed that the number had suddenly flipped. The author felt better that a senior Republican leader at least recognized the problem, but when the Trump cult took hold, it was the leadership that changed. By the way, that congressman was Devin Nunes.
Now conspiracy theories are invented for every major event that has happened in recent years, such as the 2020 election, COVID-19, and the war in Ukraine. Let’s examine the research to get some clues as to why this is, and what, if anything, we can do about it.
Glut of right-wing misinformation
Researchers from The Ohio State University ran a study in 2021 on political views and media bias. They confirmed that although partisans on both the left and right tended to believe claims that supported their point of view, conservatives were far more likely to believe in outright lies. Yet the study also discovered the main reason for this was the American media environment, which is targeted toward conservatives:
“Both liberals and conservatives tend to make errors that are influenced by what is good for their side,” said Kelly Garrett, co-author of the study and professor of communication at The Ohio State. “But the deck is stacked against conservatives because there is so much more misinformation that supports conservative positions. As a result, conservatives are more often led astray.”
The study also found that conservatives were less likely to believe stories that were true, if it contradicted their point of view. The researchers said that the evidence showed that the media environment shaped people’s misperceptions. "These results underscore the importance of reducing the supply of right-leaning misinformation."
Joe Rogan spreading COVID-19 misinformation on his podcast
Unfortunately, there is a whole disinformation industry business model that has developed in recent years that actually monetizes fear, which the right-wing media not only created but continues to fan.
Clare Birchall of Kings College London explains this by saying, “In short, there is always someone making money off of conspiracy theories. In the case of platforms such as 4Chan/8Chan/8Kun, they use their alleged championing of free speech to allow wild conspiracies to thrive on their platforms as it creates traffic that will see ads for the platform owner's book company.” (4Chan and 8Chan, now 8Kun, are message boards that are popular with extremists and conspiracy theorists.)
The fact is that conspiracists also drive small donor donations, which has evolved into a big business in American politics. (Trump’s Save America fundraising committee that targets small-dollar donors raised $19 million in the first quarter this year.) This is one major reason why conservative lawmakers are so loath to stop the misinformation. In many cases, they happily promote it.
They are direct beneficiaries despite the tremendous damage being done to our democratic process. Here in Florida, I have to contend with GOP activists bombarding Spanish language social media sites with numerous conspiracies. Ginning up fake fear and outrage is apparently a small price to pay to win over a few ill-gotten votes.
The two key psychological traits in conspiracy-sharing conservatives
Recently published research discovered that there is a subset of conservatives who are not only very susceptible to misinformation but also those most likely to spread it. The research, which utilized over 4,600 participants who underwent eight experimental studies, found that “low-conscientiousness conservatives,” or LCCs, were spreading the most misinformation. The researchers said they shared two distinct psychological traits:
Proud Boys march in Olympia, Washington
As with other research, this study confirmed that conservatives have a “much greater tendency towards misinformation.” Yet using statistical analysis, it was discovered that the common denominator for spreading misinformation came from those wanting a general “desire for chaos,” which was defined as a motivation to take down the social and political institutions to “assert dominance and superiority of one’s own group.”
For LCCs, spreading fake news was a way to encourage this chaos. The study concluded by stating efforts should be focused on this particular subset of conservatives.
Fortunately, LCCs are easily identifiable online. Social media companies can and should be proactive in limiting their ability to spread misinformation. Fact-checking doesn’t do much to dissuade them, although psychological targeting has proven to be effective in curbing some of the illicit behavior. In fact, experiments with psychological targeting showed that matching the content of persuasive appeals to an individual’s psychological characteristics, which can be accurately predicted by their digital footprint, significantly altered their behavior.
Conditioning to mistrust fact providers
On Feb. 17, the State Department said Russia was set to invade Ukraine. Fox News, and in particular, Tucker Carlson, immediately went on the attack. He said invasion talk was “hysteria” and had a chyron under him that read: “NEWS OUTLETS ARE BEHAVING LIKE STATE MEDIA AND UNCRITICALLY PUSHING STATE DEPT PROPAGANDA.” The career diplomats at the State Department were lying. The State Department wasn’t the only government agency Fox News likes to attack. Fox had many articles, like this one, attacking the Center for Disease Control since the start of the pandemic.
It seems today’s conservative believes that researchers, scientists, academics, journalists, and government experts all conspire to lie to them, yet they also believe a small cadre of right-wing pundits hocking dietary supplements and pillows feed them the unvarnished truth. The right-wing determined long ago that they can’t compete based on facts, which have a liberal bias, so they attacked everyone and anyone who could provide unbiased facts. The independent press? All in the tank for Democrats. Academics? Liberals. Government officials? Please.
The glut of misinformation has fact-checking organizations working overtime, but unfortunately, Republicans don’t trust them, either. According to the Pew Research Center, Republicans are “far more likely” to say fact-checkers are biased. I’ve personally experienced this many times. Anytime I post a rebuttal using a fact-checking website, I’m told it’s biased or, in some cases, run by George Soros.
If you can’t trust anyone, you might as well trust the random YouTube conspiracy theorist. If two people can’t agree on an independent, valid source, then anything and everything is up for grabs. Try to imagine playing Scrabble with someone who argues that the dictionary is a liberal artifact constructed by the Rothschilds in order to suppress conservative thought. It’s absurd, but so is believing that there is no one you can trust to give you independent, truthful data except for politicians and pundits you are predisposed to liking.
Echo chamber
Anyone who has argued with someone from the MAGA crowd knows how hard it is to penetrate the immense bubble they have built for themselves. Any negative information about “their” officials or leaders is ignored or treated as a partisan attack. Negative information, no matter how small, is treated as a major scandal if it’s the opposition. Surrounding yourself with only like-minded people making straw-man arguments all day, and getting information only from partisan outlets means that you can literally brainwash yourself.
Both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin were victims of their own relentless propaganda. They surrounded themselves with suck-ups and fearful advisers who never dared to point out reality. It’s why Trump thought his ridiculous coup plan would work, and why Putin thought invading Ukraine would be a cake-walk. It’s also why thousands of people thought they could violently attack the Capitol building on a Wednesday and be back to work with no consequences on Thursday. Sadly, accepting a steady stream of propaganda and conspiracies into your media diet makes it easy to convert your beliefs into your personal identity; and once that happens, it’s maddeningly difficult to extract someone before they commit harm to themselves or others.
Although the internet has connected us more than ever, it does allow people to insulate themselves from other points of view that only reinforce their biases. This has a scientific term: “cyberbalkanization.” Internet users who do this will only believe information from like-minded individuals and won’t trust anything from people who hold different values. Social media algorithms are designed to push content in line with people’s preferences, even if the content is wrong and/or dangerous.
Unfortunately, Russia figured out how to exploit this. Putin’s regime paid hundreds, possibly thousands, of bloggers to flood forums and social networks with misinformation for years. Russian troll farms are pushing a new wave of pro-Putin, anti-Ukraine disinformation on conservatives. In response, Facebook, Google, and Twitter limited their ability to advertise or monetize on their platforms, and Russia was cut off from accessing many foreign accounts to pay for them. Putin, fearing truthful posts about the war would drown out his misinformation attempts, had the Russian legislature pass a law to severely curb Twitter and completely block Facebook.
All of this had an impact:
A new research study showed how effective it is to give a little exposure outside of an echo chamber even for just a little bit. The researchers recruited a sample of regular Fox News viewers and paid a subset of them to watch CNN instead. The results were astounding:
“Not only did CNN and Fox cover different things during the September 2020 survey period, but the audience of committed Fox viewers, which started the month with conservative predispositions, changed their minds on many issues.
Switchers were five percentage points more likely to believe that people suffer from long Covid, for example, and six points more likely to believe that many foreign countries did a better job than the U.S. of controlling the virus.
They were seven points more likely to support voting by mail. And they were 10 points less likely to believe that supporters of then-candidate Joe Biden were happy when police officers get shot, 11 points less likely to say it’s more important for the president to focus on containing violent protesters than on the coronavirus, and 13 points less likely to agree that if Biden were elected, ‘we’ll see many more police get shot by Black Lives Matter activists.'”
It may be tempting to cut someone who has fallen down a rabbit hole out of your life, and I never fault people who do. After all, many of them aren’t looking to “be saved.” For me, however, it’s usually worth engaging with friends and loved ones who I know are being actively targeted by right-wing propaganda. After all, there’s a close correlation between those who fall into conspiracies and those who get their news from conservative news sources.
In some cases, it has been enough to stop their fall by just maintaining a connection without judgment. All of my right-wing friends know full well what my liberal beliefs are, and some choose never to discuss with me. That’s fine, but my connection to them makes it difficult for those whispering in their ear that I secretly want to kidnap children to sacrifice to Hillary Clinton.
QAnon protest
That said, I do have boundaries, and I have ended longtime friendships over being told that the Sandy Hook kids were crisis actors or that Michelle Obama was once a man. I have no room for that kind of toxicity in my life. Yet usually, it’s just stupid nonsense. I doubt I have ever gotten someone to switch sides, but I do know that I helped—ranging from someone who just agreed to confirm something before they post, to another person I helped get out of QAnon.
If nothing else, I am always there to help break them out of their echo chamber. Sometimes that is all that is needed to get them to take that first step out of the hole.
If you do know someone who has fallen into a rabbit hole, there are some techniques you can use to help them look at things rationally. Right-wing media creates conspiracy theorists by trapping them in a vortex of fear. For some, it takes over their lives. If you are able, reach out. Help them engage in activities offline and outside their echo chamber. Don’t ever engage in their nonsense, but don’t insult them either. It’s not easy to pull them out, and I can’t promise it will always work, but it’s worth the effort for people you care about.
It might be time to talk about a public awareness campaign so people can recognize disinformation when they see it. Fox News isn’t getting any better, as seen by their latest fearmongering on “great replacement theory.” It’s too bad right-wing media outlets don’t come with warning labels. No, it might not lead to lung cancer, but it’s a cancer nonetheless. And this past week in Buffalo, New York, showed it’s just as deadly.
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